EU Pushes Digital ID AGE CHECKS To GAME, Use Social Media

EU Pushes Digital ID AGE CHECKS To GAME, Use Social Media

Steve Watson

Brussels is preparing to treat a new Steam account the same way it treats a passport check. The forthcoming EU Kids Act, due to be unveiled by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and tech chief Henna Virkkunen, would force age verification on social media, video-sharing sites, “risky” online games and AI chatbots. 

Officials are wrapping it in child protection. The machinery looks a lot more like a continent-wide identity gate.

Internal documents obtained by Euractiv set the tone. “The EU Kids Act will oblige providers of social media services and video-sharing platforms to perform age verification when a user opens a new account.” 

Those checks would run through an EU age-verification tool or another solution prepared by public authorities. Tech firms would also pay the Commission “enforcement costs.” Spain and the Netherlands pushed last week to drag games and AI companions into the net.

The draft sets an EU-wide minimum age of 15 for an autonomous account, with a ladder of controls below that. Children under three would be barred from high-risk services. 

Ages three to 13 would get parent-controlled “child-friendly” access. Thirteen- to fifteen-year-olds would need parental “introductory” accounts with limited features. Even 15- to 18-year-olds would remain under “safe by design” rules targeting infinite scroll and other so-called addictive features. 

Existing accounts would face “proportionate” checks. Which games count as “risky to minors” is still conveniently vague.

Von der Leyen is expected to preview the plan in her State of the Union address, with the formal pitch on Thursday. The Commission already has an age-verification “mini wallet” built on the same specs as the European Digital Identity Wallet due by the end of 2026. 

Officials sell it as privacy-preserving proof of age. Platforms in Britain and Australia have already demanded phone numbers, facial scans, government ID or credit cards.

 Sony locked PlayStation comms features in the UK and Ireland behind those checks. Steam in Australia now wants an Australian credit card for R18+ titles, locking out adults who only hold debit cards.

PlayStation’s 2011 breach exposed data on about 77 million users. Asking the same industry to hoard fresh biometric and ID data, then invoice Brussels for the privilege of policing it, is not a child-safety plan. It is an identity architecture.

The next move is already on the record. When users try to route around the gates, Brussels wants the exits sealed.

Virkkunen has said preventing circumvention of age-verification systems would be among the “next steps” policymakers need to examine. Von der Leyen frames the whole project as a way to “defend children’s rights.” 

France has already pointed at VPNs after its own under-15 social media clampdown. Once every login needs a state-approved age token, a VPN is no longer a privacy tool. It is a loophole.

This is not a one-off gaming rule. It sits on top of a stack Brussels has been assembling for years.

Chat Control would force providers to scan private messages and break end-to-end encryption in the name of finding child sexual abuse material. Signal’s Meredith Whittaker warned it “could spell the end of the right to privacy in Europe.” WhatsApp’s Will Cathcart said the presidency text still “breaks end-to-end encryption, risking everyone’s privacy and security.”

The so-called Democracy Shield layers the Digital Services Act with “disinformation” codes, trusted flaggers and political-ad rules that treat speech about family, nation or faith as a moderation problem. 

Jerzy Kwa?niewski of Ordo Iuris put it plainly: under the banner of protecting democracy, the EU is rolling out regulations that “curb free expression, sideline conservative voices, and reshape the public sphere through opaque moderation, labeling, and algorithmic controls.”

When member states lag, the Commission sues. Brussels has already taken countries to court for failing to enforce its digital rulebook hard enough.

Washington noticed. President Trump has weighed travel bans on EU officials behind the DSA, a law the White House treats as an attempt to export European speech controls onto American platforms and users. The State Department said it was “monitoring increasing censorship in Europe with great concern.”

If you want to know what the finished product looks like, take a peek across the Channel. Former British PM Keir Starmer announced a social media ban for under-16s and said, “We’re giving children their childhoods back.” The fine print is mandatory age verification for adults: facial scans, passports, credit cards. 

Elon Musk called it “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” whose “real goal is to enable the UK government to track everyone.”

Telegram founder Pavel Durov saw the pattern immediately. “Once somebody says child protection, all of a sudden it triggers very ancient, very deep parts of our brain. Who would be against protecting children? It completely bypasses logic.” His verdict on the West: “Our ship has already hit the iceberg.”The policing stats are not theoretical. Big Brother Watch’s FOI haul found at least 62,199 arrests for communications offences in England and Wales between 2021 and 2025 — about 34 a day. Only about one in five of those arrests produced a conviction. The knock on the door is the punishment.

That is the sequence. Ban the kids. Verify the adults. Scan the devices. Flag the posts. Call it safety.

Gamers are simply the next population Brussels can march through the same gate. Parents already have tools, ratings and the off switch. What they are being offered instead is a Commission-approved age token, a bill sent to Silicon Valley, and a standing excuse to treat VPNs, anonymous accounts and unapproved speech as a child-protection emergency.